Thursday, September 13, 2001 -- A personal perspective of the
events in NYC--By Professor Joachim Kohn, Board of Governors, Professor of
Chemistry, Rutgers University Department of Chemistry

Dear friends:

I had spent the last 10 days in Israel and happened to return one
day before the terrorist attacks took place in the USA. During the
last 10 days in Israel, I toured the Muslim Quarter in the old city
of Jerusalem and made a short trip through the West Bank, bringing
me into close contact with the Arab population. In view of the current
events, I would like to share with you some of my personal observations.

Several weeks ago, a front page report in USA Today described the
secret world of suicide bombers (I have a copy available for those
who are interested). It showed that every single suicide bomber
is a devote Muslim who strongly believes that by killing himself
he will be entitled to enter the "7th heaven" where he will enjoy
(among other benefits) the services of 60 heavenly virgins to fulfill
all of his wildest sexual dreams while being totally deprived of
any female contact on earth. From my experiences in Israel, I can
confirm that this provocative "USA Today" report is essentially
correct. (Click
here to see USA Today story)

Even if the current terrorist cell will be totally wiped out, there
is a long line of deprived fanatical Muslims waiting to kill themselves
for the glory of Islam. In Israel, there is currently at least one
suicide bombing per week - usually resulting in an average of 3
casualties per incident. Arab terror organizations brag in public
with the large number of suicide bombers being trained for their
missions right now. During this Friday's sermon the Muslim spiritual
leader in Jerusalem praised the value of suicide bombing for the
benefit of Islam. The father of the suicide bomber who killed about
30 Israeli teenagers says that he is sorry that he could not do
it himself and how proud he is of his son. The family of each such
suicide bomber is assured of significant life-long payments (pensions)
and each bomber is highly honored in public. From my own observations,
I can assure you that the phenomenon of "suicide bombing" is now
firmly established in the Islamic culture - We are facing a frightening
and dangerous period of madness in the world. So far, the Israelis
have not found any effective countermeasure against a determined
suicide bomber and we will be facing additional attacks.

America is the symbol of the "western world" - and the hatred of
fundamentalist Muslims against America has little to do with America's
politics or support of Israel. In my conversations with fundamentalist
Muslims in the West Bank, I was specifically told that they hate
the Western values of equality between the sexes, separation of
church and state, personal liberties, and freedom of religion. All
of these values are a threat to fundamentalist Muslims and America,
as the strongest Western power, is their preferred target of hate.
Note the "model society" established by the Taliban in Afghanistan
- where every one of the above "Western" values has been abolished.

From a historic perspective, the attack on the World Trade Center
was the single most deadly terrorist attack ever - In the past,
local bombings and the crashing of single air planes resulted in
losses of life in the tens to hundreds per incident. The most devastating
suicide bombing in Israel resulted in about 50 casualties. Terrorists
have now shown that they are willing and eager to kill in the thousands.
This is a major escalation. The next escalation of this scale of
destruction will come when biological, chemical or nuclear materials
will be used to cause death at a scale of ten thousands to hundred
thousands of people per incident. When this happens the current
destruction in NYC may look like "child's play".